shipping error not in your favor

At left is the totally awesome shark plane that J’s parents bought for Christmas for his niece. It’s an online-only item from Toys ‘R’ Us. Any child would be lucky to receive such a fun and cool-looking gift, right? The problem is that thanks to an accidentally sexist shipping mixup, they didn’t get the plane: they got a pink pedal car instead, a week before Christmas. This kind of thing happens all the time, though, so Toys ‘R’ Us should be able to handle a vehicle swap with no problem. Right? [More]

In hindsight, Marla would have been better off ordering a toaster and a toaster oven from anywhere except Sears. But she didn’t know that the company has entered the next phase of its existence as a massive anti-capitalist prank, and has now added an absurdist theater aspect to the project. At least, that’s the only explanation for some of the conversations Marla had when her toaster didn’t show up. First, they refused to understand that the toaster wasn’t in the box at all. Then, she received a call to come pick up her floor-model toaster at a store in Maine. Marla lives in Alaska.

Matt’s parents are loyal, longtime Verizon Wireless customers, and they wanted iPhones. Really, really wanted iPhones, to the point that they got up at 3:30 AM on February 3rd to place their orders at the special Verizon-subscriber time. But their iPhones never showed. Thanks to a shipping error, their phones–and their phone calls–ended up shipped to someone else, with both receipts in the box. Verizon’s response: they told them to order the phones again on February 10, with the general public. The frustration!

Francis tells Consumerist that his online order from Levi’s went slightly wrong. They sent him the wrong order. Simple enough: especially when the item was intended as a holiday gift, most retailers would immediately put a replacement order in the mail. Not Levi’s. Francis says that they were much more concerned with getting the other customer’s order back than with making sure that he received his original order in a timely fashion. Update: Francis’s situation was fixed even before we posted his story on the site. Hooray!